Is it "Gothic 4: Arcania" or "Arcania: Gothic 4"? I never was sure about that. Nominally it is the fourth game of my much-beloved Gothic series, albeit the first title not developed by the originating studio, Piranha Bytes, and instead created by Spellbound Entertainment, creators of such excellent games as Airline Tycoon and Helldorado. Anyway, Gothic 4 nee ArcaniA got a lot of flak for not being true to the franchise and, let's be frank, quite fairly so. Unlike it predecessors, Gothic 4 is a disturbingly linear game, with the player led by hand from one encounter to the next with almost no opportunity to explore or follow his own path. There is a distinct lack in the number of sub-quests, and the few that do exist rarely required me to travel far off the beaten path. The combat system has been streamlined to the point of idiocy; there's was little need for tactics or skill on my part when I could just walk up to the bad guy and click on him a few times until he fell over dead. The combat was so unchallenging that I almost never used healing potions or spells; there just wasn't any point.

There isn't much in the way of a story either; a bad guy kills my lady-love and I'm off for revenge. There might have been more emotional commitment on my part if I had known her for more than five minutes before her untimely death, or if she had spoken more than ten lines to me. The other characters are similarly flat and faceless; the few that show a glimmer of personality only do so because I had met them before in previous games and knew them from those adventures. And just when the story hits its climax, I kill the big bad and get dumped to the main menu with nary an epilogue.

And yet, and yet... In many areas, the game does have the FEEL of a Gothic game. It certainly has the look down pat, with its lush forests, thick-body characters and crumbling, dark-ages buildings. The attitude of the main character is wonderfully snarky, just like in the previous titles and while it never fully expands on it, there are hints of the grey-on-grey morality that made the earlier games so much fun. It is so obviously a game that was rushed-to-release - in fact, there is a whole huge section of the map that was inexplicably and obviously cut out - and I can't help but feel that, given enough time, Spellbound might have recaptured the magic of the first three games. It is so temptingly close to the solid gameplay I expect from the franchise that I kept at it until I completed the game, but sadly disappoints in the end.

This is another one I have mixed feelings about. I might as well start with the good; The interface is sexy, the equipment customization is decent, the music is alright, and the voice acting doesn't suck... constantly. Even the lockpicking has now been given its own minigame, adding gameplay where before it had been trial-and-error, and then removed altogether. The graphics are good, but suffer from a stuttering problem on all visual quality settings that I sort of figured out in the expansion. Unlike the previous title, the game progresses constantly and rewards the player at an acceptable pace. The combat is a decent change from the monotony of Gothic 3, but I would suggest turning the difficulty up. It can also get a little muddled in melee because all of the attacking, blocking, and dodging actions are still mapped to only two buttons.

I have only one complaint that ruined the game for me. Arcania is streamlined, and when I say that, I mean, you could hand me a map of the game world, and I could draw the rough path the player will take through it on every playthrough. It technically qualifies as an open-world game, but doesn't really try to be one. Most of the time, the player is just supposed to keep going on the path ahead, which works in some cases, I suppose. Not every RPG needs to be a living, breathing, truly open world, and I did notice that this design did allow for some more specific detail in certain areas, but there are still the occasional floating plants, stretched or missing textures, and indefinitely closed doors, the hallmarks of a rushed game. However, those problems can be overlooked compared to the bigger gameplay faults compounded by the same linear nature.

For example, the teleport system is just bad. In the previous games, the player could teleport from where ever, as long as he had the proper rune or stone. Here, teleporting can only be done between two designated pads, which are uncovered in a fairly linear pattern through game progression. Often, the distance between connected pads is shorter than the distance from one "pad network" to another. Why does this suck? Well, imagine you want to go to the other side of the map to finish up some uncompleted sidequests, and you haven't gotten to the point where the linear path around the map finally loops. This would mean that, to go back, you would have to run back to the nearest teleport pad, teleport, and from that pad, run to the next pad, and repeat. It takes so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ long to get anywhere in this game, and most enemies stay dead. No fast travel, no "teleport from anywhere", you're just running through areas already conquered.

Yet, the most insulting part of this change to the formula is the fact that most interactive objects in the world (anvils, kettles, etc.) have been stripped of purpose, to the point that the game actually provides the option to turn them off so that the player doesn't waste his or her time by accidentally activating them. Being able to craft what I want, when I want from a clean interface is convenient, but it removes any kind of premeditation and planning from the experience, and only highlights the fact that it was made this way so that players wouldn't have to do any monotonous, risk-free backtracking.

I'm not sure whether to fully recommend this game. Gothic 3 was a great concept executed poorly. Arcania is a bad concept executed fairly well, but only within its own context. Without any of the familiar names within the game, this is just a bland, generic, linear action RPG that doesn't really stand out, and certainly does not live up to its predecessors.

Cons:- I had to change the quality of my soundcard to 48000 Hz because the game did not start appropriately- Forced V-Sinc through software- Bad camera over the head (I tried to focus on the scenario, like a FPS)- You must download a mod called TreasureHuntersMap15 to locate all the secret artefacts.- The introduction chapter does not represent the quality of the game. To enjoy it, I recommend to give it a chance after the tutorial missions.